futurED

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Project Info

Project Description

When you’re a parent, you have to make lots of decisions.
Sometimes those decisions are small. Whereas others shape the future.
Our mission is to help parents make a more informed decision when choosing the right school for their children.
futurED will help parents easily navigate the Victorian Education System.
Finding all eligible schools with your home address at the heart of the search.
Easily filter the results by school types and preferences, and visually see the schools in your zone using up to date school data.
Using PTV datasets and google maps API, we can show parents the estimated time to get to school, whether they drive, walk, use public transport or ride their bikes.
Simply register interest for open days, and see what the community is saying on the review forums.
If parents are new to the area and are thinking about moving, futurED displays a snapshopt of the suburb median house prices for buying and renting. All these features make it easier for parents to make the right decisions when choosing a school.
We know that parents are not looking for a school, They’re looking for a future.
futurED

Data Story

What’s the problem for Schools?

Currently, Schools rely on posters to promote open days and rely on paper forms for new enrolments. Relying on a paper based system has the following pain points:

reduces the amount of reach in gaining traction from prospective families

Time to process is always high because it is a manual process on both sides.

Environmentally unfriendly.

What’s the problem for parents?

“It’s not about finding a school. It’s about finding the right education for my child”

Parents are under immense pressure when trying to select a school for their child.

They are dependant on calling the schools in the local area and finding information on the school websites to better understand the enrolment process. This results in a stressful and lengthy bureaucratic nightmare for parents. Particularly for new families who are not familiar with the Australian schooling system, this process is incredibly overwhelming.

## What does this space currently look like?

Currently, the Victorian government department websites that are focusing on schools, only display information about where schools are located based on the address you input. They do not provide any information about the school enrolment process, or dates for open days.

The Data Story

Let’s now look at a live example on how the datasets can come together to help parents make the right decision.

Let’s say for example a parent living at 99 Connolly Ave, Coburg VIC 3058, wants to search for schools in their neighbourhood. The list of schools dataset we obtained from data.vic will provide the nearest schools and related information

When the parent chooses to view more details about Coburg North Primary School, the next dataset, which is a combination of google maps directions API and PTV dataset, provides information on how long will the daily commute to school takes, rather than just showing the distance. It helps the parents connect in a practical level. In this case 6 minutes via car, 19 minutes via public transport and 34 minutes by walk.

Most of the time, parents want to give their children the best education possible. Some parents might make a decision on the suburbs they want to move in or buy houses based on the schools nearby. In that case, the median property prices dataset obtained from https://www.myvictoria.vic.gov.au/data-sources provides median house prices or rental prices of the suburb that particular school is located in.

In this case, $880,000 median house price and $420 rent per week.

Therefore we have given the parents all the information they need, based on their preferences, allowing them to choose the best possible school for their children. We have done so using a variety of datasets